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posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 11 2018, @03:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the lifting-a-leg-up dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Dogs supposedly trained to detect and respond to potentially life-threatening blood sugar levels in people with diabetes were, in reality, often untrained, un-housebroken puppies with hefty pricetags—currently set at $25,000. At least, that's according to a lawsuit filed this week by Attorney General Mark Herring on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

According to the lawsuit, the non-profit company Service Dogs by Warren Retrievers and its owner Charles Warren Jr. made extraordinary claims about their "diabetic alert dogs." The company and Warren said that the dogs were highly trained and that their performance was "backed by science."

[...] Virginia has a bone to pick about almost all of that. Though the prices were real, the dogs' abilities were not, according to the lawsuit. Customers said they received "ready" dogs that were not at all trained to detect and respond to blood sugar levels.

[...] Moreover, SDWR's dogs lacked even basic pet training, according to the lawsuit. Some dogs were merely puppies that were not housebroken, struggled to walk on a leash, chewed on things, and didn't respond to their names. They also displayed behaviors incompatible for service animal work, including frequent barking, jumping on people, and being terrified of loud noises.

[...] "[T]hese hopeful and vulnerable consumers receive poorly trained, ill-behaved dogs that are not equipped to help them manage a life-threatening disability and are little more than very expensive pets," the lawsuit concludes.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/25k-diabetic-alert-dogs-were-untrained-un-housebroken-puppies-lawsuit-says/


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by JNCF on Friday May 11 2018, @04:56PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 11 2018, @04:56PM (#678478) Journal

    Yes.

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